Food products, such as confectionary products like wine-gums, pastils or starch-gelling type sweets, but also fruits and raisins are appreciated by its users, when they have a nice gloss. Therefore these products were and are treated with a glazing composition, that can provide the required gloss to the products. Commercial glazing agents, that are available so far, are based on blends of MCT-oils or high stability oils (=HSO) and natural or synthetic waxes (e.g. bees wax). MCT-oils are synthetic triglycerides with fatty acid residues with a chain length of 4-10 C-atoms; high stability oils are natural oils or tractions of natural oils or fractionated, hardened vegetable fats or blends thereof, that display high rancimat induction period (=RIP)-values (and are therefore resistant to oxidation).
It was known, that the use of the MCT-oil or HSO-only did not lead to satisfactory results. In order to come to acceptable results with respect to gloss it was known to the man skilled in the art that the presence of a natural or synthetic wax was essential. However, the presence of such waxes also have a couple of drawbacks, e.g. it was found, that confectionery sweets, such as wine-gums provided with a coating based on MCT-oil and a wax clumped together, so that a less attractive clump of sweets were present in the coated (or glazed) products, instead of individually separated sweets. Moreover indications were found, that waxes are less suitable for food products, as some health-risks might be involved in its use. Moreover natural waxes are expensive and not easily available. Attempts, made so far to improve this clumping led to solutions, wherein the use of an alcohol carrier was required. This requirement complicates the processing and is less acceptable because of fire-risks and the need of special equipment, like vents etc.
In order to overcome above drawbacks and to come to a composition, that can be applied as a glazing composition for food products, resulting in products with an improved gloss and a reduced clumping together, we have studied whether the waxes in the known glazing compositions could be replaced or avoided. This study has resulted in new compositions, which fulfil all above requirements.